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Dry Bones THE
BULLY BOY

Opinion

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Editorial

Who Needs Syria?

nce, making peace with
Damascus was one of
Israel's priorities, but not
today. Syrian President Bashar
Assad has ineptly painted his
country into a geopolitical corner
by sanctioning the murder of
former Lebanese Prime Minister
Rafik Hariri and 19 other people
in February and by stonewalling
the subsequent United Nations
investigation.
That probe implicated Assad
and his brother-in-law Asef
Shawkat (chief of Syria's military
intelligence) in Harriri's killing.
And a subsequent U.N. resolu-
tion warned of sanctions against
Syria if it doesn't cooperate
"unconditionally" in the ongoing
Hariri probe. According to John
Bolton, America's U.N. envoy, the
resolution "unmistakably sent a
clear message" to Assad.
We hope the ophthalmologist-
turned-dictator can see the
handwriting on the wall. That .
doesn't mean sacrificing a few
scapegoats, even a few other
brothers-in law or two; it means
real cooperation with United

0

Nations investigators.
We also have some suggestions
for the people who make
America's foreign policy:
• First, Assad must genuinely
bolster the Syria-Iraq border to
block insurgents from smuggling
weapons and jihadists into Iraq.
(Syria recently hosted several TV
journalists for a Potemkin-vil-
lage tour of that porous border,
but nobody was fooled.)
•Assad must stop supporting
Palestinian terrorism and stop
financing Hezbollah in Lebanon.
And he must stop meddling in
that country's affairs after 29
years Of occupation.
If Assad doesn't comply, the
United States must press the U.N.
to impose a tough economic boy-
cott on Syria, not like the inept
and dishonest sanctions that
helped feed billions of dollars
into Saddam Hussein's coffers
after the Gulf War.
Real and effective pressure
would also benefit Israel because
it might deter Assad from fan-
ning the flames of Palestinian
terrorism.

In addition, pressing Assad
will surely take the Golan
Heights out of play as a bargain-
ing chip in any future road map
negotiations between Israel and
the Palestinians. In any event,
Israel isn't in any hurry to give
up the Golan, which it formally
annexed in 1981 and is now
home to some 20,000 settlers,
Meanwhile, we're glad to see
that Syria is getting little backing
in the Arab world, especially
from Egypt, its partner in the
short-lived United Arab
Republic. Indeed, Syria's only ally
seems to be Iran.
As for Assad, the only weapon
left to him is probably leaving a
power vacuum that would make
Iraq look like a stroll in the park
if he leaves office. However, with
the region in an uproar, the usual
suspects in the Arab world are
not buying that argument.
"We hope Syria will cooperate
completely with the investiga-
tion," editorialized the govern-
ment-supported Al Ahram,
Egypt's most important newspa-
per."But the starting point before

ISRAEL IS NOT
ON OFFICIAL
IRANIAN MAPS!

www.DryBonesBlog.Blogspot.com

any talk of Arab support is total
Syrian cooperation with the
international investigation:' the
editorial added.
And even the Arab League,
which usually marches in lock-
step with any member that's in
trouble, declined to comment,
Ha'aretz noted.
Maybe our wish list for Syria
seems over-optimistic, But con-
sider this: If someone had pre-
dicted 20 years ago that Syria

and Iraq — two of Israel's arch-
enemies — would become bit
players in the Middle East, that
"expert" would have been
laughed out of the room. That
outcome — and the seeming
thaw in Israeli-Arab diplomatic
relations — gives us hope for the
future. ❑

E-mail your opinion in a letter to the
editor of no more than 150 words
to: letters@thejewishnews.com.

Reality Check

Shared Memories

I is been named Rosa Parks
Boulevard for years. But old
Detroiters still call it 12th
Street. •
No disrespect to the great lady
of the civil rights movement.
They just can't help it. It was 12th
when they lived there and in
their minds it will always be
12th.
Just as they will always call it
"the Boulevard" rather than
Grand Boulevard, and pronounce
it "By-una Vista" instead of the
more elegant Spanish Buena
Vista.
I suppose the proper way to
say Appoline, which was a fash-
ionable 19th century first name
for women, is with the accent on
the second syllable--a-POL-lin-
uh. But I have never heard it
done any other way but Apple-
line, which sounds like the name
of a rural trolley company.

40

Which is a roundabout way of
explaining why so many
Detroiters who haven't lived in
the city for years still feel invest-
ed there. Every street ties a mem-
ory down, every name has its
own special twist.
Twelfth is, of course, a street
that figured large in local Jewish
history. Through the 1920s and
into the next decade, it was the
main drag of the community. By
the mid-1930s, the center had
moved a few blocks west to
Linwood and Dexter. But on the
eve of the 1967 riots, when the
old 12th Street disappeared for-
ever in smoke and ash, there
were still many Jewish-owned
stores between the Boulevard
and Davison.
I can remember my dad doing
his supermarketing at the B&C
Market, which was on 12th and
Richton. Prices may have been

better at the A&P over
greater than it really was.
on Hamilton, but he was
I had that fact brought
a firm believer in sup-
home to me several years
porting Jewish-owned
ago when I was doing a
businesses.
TV segment about the
Rosa Parks Boulevard
old Wilson Dairy, at
is certainly a more sce-
James Couzens and
nic thoroughfare, with a
Outer Drive. Its front
George Cantor tower was sort of an Art
slender median and
Colu mnist
new town homes. But
Deco landmark.
the old 12th Street was
More than that,
charged with vitality. Even in the
though, was the memory of the
years preceding the riots, when
ice cream sundaes devoured
this was almost a completely
there, a standard part of any visit
black neighborhood, the side-
to my grandmother's house on
walks were always crowded, and
nearby Snowden.
there was such great energy.
When I did my shoot, it had
What I find striking is that
become a dry cleaner. A nearby
despite the memories of our
resident, dropping off some
community, these Detroit neigh-
clothes, asked what we were
borhoods have been African-
doing. When I explained, he
American a whole lot longer than smiled and said, "I really miss
they ever were Jewish. It's the
that ice cream. We'd been going
intensity of the memories that
there for years!'
makes the time span seem
Northwest Detroit turned into

a predominantly African-
American community in the late
1960s. It has remained that way
ever since. In the well of memo-
ry, my family lived in that neigh-
borhood for a long, long time.
But when I count up the years, it
was only 14, less than a third of
the time my fellow mourner of
vanished sundaes had been a
resident.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
wrote that "The thoughts of
youth are long, long thoughts."
The memories made in youth
remain alive and vivid for a life-
time.
And they remind us how
closely intertwined the Detroit
experience has been for Jews and
African-Americans. ❑

George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor614@aol.com .

November 10 2005

J.